


A Fine, High-Quality, Well Engineered, Neat, Orderly, Excellent, Beautiful Mess

by Drakey



Series: Truth [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Creepy Force Children, Crushes, Gen, I don't owe anyone any diacritics 'cause they're hard, Lothal, Mild Time Travel, The Lothal Jedi Temple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:13:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drakey/pseuds/Drakey
Summary: When strange things start happening in the Force on Lothal, some of the best of the Jedi and Former Jedi come to investigate. And hey, since there's so many children there, why not bring the kids?By the time Luke and Galen arrive, though, four children are missing and what's happening in the Force has started to go from just strange to outright bizarre. Now, it's up to the adults to solve the mystery and protect the kids, but the bonds between children may hold the key to everything.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & Kanan Jarrus, Ezra Bridger/Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Quinlan Vos, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Series: Truth [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700803
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40





	A Fine, High-Quality, Well Engineered, Neat, Orderly, Excellent, Beautiful Mess

**Author's Note:**

> Just a warning: there are some elements of time travel in this, but I've tried to keep everything relatively easy to understand.

There was an order in which fun went. Starting from the least fun, it went Uncle Obi-Wan, Auntie Padme, Uncle Lux, Dad, Uncle Mace, Mom, Auntie Ahsoka, Uncle Cody, Uncle Rex, Uncle Wolffe, C-3PO, Luke, Uncle Skyguy, Uncle Gregor, Leia, Artoo, being left unsupervised, being left unsupervised someplace adults thought was dangerous, and Uncle Quinlan.

Uncle Skyguy was only the seventh most fun kind of company Galen Marek could have, but he was definitely starting to move up in the world. For one thing, Galen hadn't even known that Uncle Skyguy owned a ship. Oh, he knew Auntie Padme had a ship, because she was a senator and also she was rich, and since she was married to Uncle Skyguy, he usually flew the ship, but that was a big, boring silver yacht. Uncle Skyguy's ship was a freighter, a Corellian YT-1760, with _real laser cannons_ and all sorts of places to hide.

Not, Galen reminded himself firmly, that he was hiding. Uncle Skyguy knew he was aboard, and had even brought him aboard, because they had to go someplace important and Galen was strong with the Force and there were supposed to be a bunch of other kids there. So Uncle Skyguy had taken Galen, Luke, and Artoo, and piled everyone aboard the _Holt Kazed_ to go off to an adventure on Lothal. According to Uncle Skyguy, Leia would be there, too, with Uncle Obi-Wan and maybe Uncle Quinlan, and Auntie Padme might show up with C-3PO. There were even supposed to be other Jedi there, too, like Master Yoda (who was either the most or the least fun at unpredictable times). 

But the worst thing about space was that it was usually boring. It was more fun to be in a freighter than a big yacht, but Luke and Artoo were off being boring by the engines, and Uncle Skyguy was up in the cockpit, worrying. People tended to forget that Galen could feel them worrying.

But even as Uncle Skyguy worried, he still flew the ship, and Galen breathed out a sigh of relief when the swirling nothing of hyperspace collapsed back into stars. He stood up on the chair of the dorsal gun turret and stared out at the planet. It was mostly brown, with big patches of blue, and it didn't have the little cloud of starships that Coruscant did. It was a little like if Kashyyyk wasn't green.

Galen hopped out of the chair and bounced from one wall to the other down the ladder onto the main deck of the ship. He hurried to the cockpit, and he beat Luke there by about ten seconds, but Uncle Skyguy was still too busy worrying to talk.

About the same time as Luke arrived, the communication panel crackled, and Uncle Skyguy answered it by flipping the switch with the Force. “This is the transport _Holt Kazed,_ how can I help you?”

“Holt Kazed, _this is Lothal traffic control. Please state your destination.”_ The response was staticky, a woman who sounded young and kind of overwhelmed. The cockpit was a gleaming, flawless place. Uncle Skyguy kept everything working perfectly, which meant that the static was Lothal's problem, not theirs.

“Traffic control, we are heading directly to the Jedi Conservatorium. Our authorization code is herf-krill-four-seven.”

The traffic control person was quiet for about two minutes as they moved closer and closer to the planet. Galen could see the grey patch of a city by the time they spoke again. “Holt Kazed, _you are cleared to land. Your approach has been announced to the Jedi, and your landing space has been outlined. Please follow the flight plan we're sending you.”_

Uncle Skyguy grunted as his controls projected the information against his window. “Thank you, Lothal control.” He adjusted his course slightly, twitching the controls and finally turning to acknowledge the kids. “Okay, you two,” he said, “you remember what I told you about Lothal?”

More information was scrolling across the window, and Uncle Skyguy watched it go by with one eye. “We're going to the Jedi Con-serv-a-tor-ium,” Luke said, having to say the long word carefully. 

“Just say school, nerd,” Galen teased. Luke rolled his eyes, obviously not even annoyed. Galen continued, “we're going to meet the teachers and the kids there, and you're going to go do Force stuff with the other Jedi.”

“Exactly,” Uncle Skyguy said. “And do you remember why I brought you?”

“Because the kids on Lothal are hard to understand, and you might need us to help,” Luke said. He radiated childish pride in the Force, but Galen supposed that could be forgiven.

“Good,” Uncle Skyguy said. “Now, your job might end up being very important, because it sounds like, since we left, some of the kids from the Conservatorium have gone missing. The other kids are saying that they're okay, but they can't tell where they are, and they might need all of us to help. Are you ready to do that?”

Galen and Luke both nodded at once.

+-+

“This is really a fine, high-quality-”

“Please shut up, Zez.”

“-well-engineered, neat, orderly-”

“Zez, please.”

“-excellent, beautiful mess we've gotten ourselves into.” Zez Kendro was ten years old, the oldest of the Lothal Kids, and he was patently not pleased. Ezra could feel Zez's displeasure from across the room. If it wasn't for the ray shield and the evil maniac they all sort of assumed was hanging around somewhere, Ezra would have gone to comfort Zez, since the other boy tended to do better when there was someone around. Of course, what Ezra really wanted was for Kanan to show up with Master Billaba and his parents and preferably the entire Republic Army. He had briefly entertained the notion of Jai coming with Kanan, and being very impressed by how brave he was, and then had quickly dismissed the idea because he'd much rather go back to the Conservatorium and tell Jai it had been scary but everything was okay and they hadn't even needed to be rescued in the end.

That scenario had stopped feeling achievable shortly before he fell asleep, when the assassin droid had dragged in a struggling child he recognized as Isaac Liscko, the youngest of the Lothal Kids. The droid had knocked most of them out, but they were training with the Force, and it was hard to get the drop on them, so most had seen the droid before it stunned them or overwhelmed them. Isaac was the latest addition, and Cherr had managed to calm him down by using the Force across their link, something she was extremely good at. 

“You know,” Cherr said, “if you would shut up and not complain about it every ten seconds, it might suck less.”

“Cherr, Zez,” Ezra said, “Can you stop for a minute?”

They both glared at him from their separate cells. Ezra raised his hands in surrender. He was only seven, and they were both older, but they were also all being trained by the Jedi, so they did listen, and the room finally got quiet.

It was a fairly large room. The central chamber was round, and about twenty meters across, with a stone floor and ceiling. There was one long hallway and six cells off the chamber, three meters deep and two meters wide, sealed with ray-shielding. There was nothing in the cells except for a hole in one corner with a smell that gave away its purpose. They could see each other, and there were only the four of them in the room. The central chamber, however, was full of stuff. In the middle of the room were a bunch of tables, covered with bits of rock and pottery shards and bones and pieces of old machinery and datapads and bits and pieces, all with little handwritten labels attached to them by string or sticky tape. Against the walls between the cells were computers and control panels, and on either side of the long hallway were wide, tall cabinets.

The air was stale, and it smelled like ozone and rock. The computers whirred softly, and the ray shields hummed. Something nearby—and they all agreed it was probably an Evil Maniac—made the Force cloudy and hard to use, like it was actively fighting their efforts. The other Lothal Kids had worked together to try to find them, but they'd barely been able to contact them. Everyone was accounted for, and nobody was hurt so far, but Ezra was starting to get scared. He could feel the nerves rolling off of Zez. 

And now, there were footsteps coming from the long hallway. It wasn't the clanking of the droid. It was bare humanoid feet. A figure in a long, dark robe stepped into the room. Yellow eyes glowed out of his hood, and yeah, this was the guy who was clouding the Force, and yep, he sure did qualify as an Evil Maniac. The Evil Maniac was carrying a slab of stone with some kind of writing on it. He placed it on a table and stepped back, radiating menace.

Zez had finally actually quieted down, but Ezra could see that it was because he was trembling. Cherr had retreated back into her cell, and Isaac was sitting right in front of his ray shield to watch the Maniac. Ezra wasn't exactly surprised that none of them had said anything. Somehow, attracting this guy's attention seemed like a really bad idea.

The Evil Maniac spread his arms out wide and Ezra could feel the Force twisting coldly around him. Various bits of stone slabs floated into the air over the temple and came together like a puzzle in front of the Evil Maniac. The big stone slab he'd entered with filled in a large hole in the middle. There were lots of little holes, but that didn't seem to bother the Evil Maniac.

The Maniac sent the pieces of his puzzle back to their respective places, and he moved to the computers and control panels. He was pale and he walked slowly. He felt old in the Force, like someone's grandpa, but Evil. And a Maniac. He worked at his computers for a while, then turned. 

Toward Ezra.

Ezra swallowed hard and tried not to panic. He didn't do very well at it.

“Ezra Bridger, yes?” the Evil Maniac said.

Ezra nodded. “Yes.”

The Evil Maniac smiled. It wasn't a comforting expression. He stepped closer, and Ezra could see him a little better. 

He was not a healthy man. For one thing, his skin was waxy and grey. His face was wrinkled so deeply he didn't look Human, but there was no other species he could be. His eyes were sunken, with dark, dark circles under them, his teeth were cracked, black and yellow spikes in his mouth. Ezra's ray shield went down, and the stench of the man rolled in like a wave: rotting meat and a cocktail of medicinal fumes that singed Ezra's senses.

“Come with me,” the Evil Maniac said. As he spoke, one of his hands extended, and Ezra was dragged to it. One of the Evil Maniac's fingers was swollen and red. It was hot to the touch.

“Who are you?” Ezra asked.

“I'm your new teacher,” the Evil Maniac said. “You may call me Sidious.”

+-+

Luke could feel Leia, somewhere off in hyperspace. She was coming quickly, and it was definitely a relief. Being apart from his family was unpleasant at the best of times, but there was something... wrong... on Lothal. Dad could protect him, but he was very, very sure that it would take a lot more than just Dad to actually _fix_ it.

He did his absolute best not to let Jai Kell feel that. The other boy was panicking in slow motion, because someone called “Ezra” was afraid, and apparently Jai was the one who knew Ezra best and he was the only one who could feel it, so while Galen did what Galen did best and caused complete havoc in the most fun way available, and Dad did what Dad did best and caused complete havoc in the most productive way available, Luke did what Luke did best and held things steady around the edges. Right now, the most ragged, unsteady edge was Jai Kell. Luke caught his hand and squeezed.

“Jai, you aren't going to help Ezra by panicking,” he said. “Listen to the fountains with me. Try to focus.”

They were in the Jedi Conservatorium, a complex of three pourstone buildings around a central courtyard that had five big fountains in it. Jai had started to panic about an hour after they landed, while Galen led the other kids in chasing around lothcats. It was nearly sunset, and Galen had gathered four of the little creatures, which followed the half-feral boy and played around on the edges of his gathering of children. They jumped in and out of the tall, golden grass, and laughter and shouting echoed from them. The burbling of the fountains wove together with the distant sound, and Luke reached out as well as he could with the Force, finding Jai's agitated mind and soothing it with the Light. 

Slowly, Jai settled. The Sense of him was still turbulent, like a pot about to boil, but he was at least no longer bubbling over. “I'm... I can still feel him. He's still afraid.”

Luke nodded. “Is he more afraid than he was?”

Jai slowly shook his head. “No. He's... He's still okay.”

Luke let his senses roam and explore around the edges of Jai's mind in the Force. Lothal was weird. The place was alive with the Force, but it was alive like a geothermal mud pit, with burst and bubbles that swelled until they popped, and over it all was...

_There_

The web of connection between the Lothal Kids was almost undetectable in the Force, fine, silky bonds bunched up and shifting as they moved and played. A few were stronger: Jai's link to Ezra was plain as day, though that was the only strong thread Luke could put a name to. That much, he already knew. Dad had told him that all the kids on Lothal had some sort of Force bond. But under it, there was another, fainter crisscrossing of bonds, each of the Lothal Kids to _something,_ or several somethings, out in the plains, too far and too hidden for Luke to find, and under that, a connection to...

“The lothcats,” Luke whispered. “You connect to the lothcats.”

Jai nodded. Luke Felt deeper. There was something else there, another connection, another bond, not a thread so much as a pool they were all immersed in, but it was too big and diffuse for Luke to figure out more. He would have to wait for Leia. They always worked better together.

And even under that, there was something else yet again, no connection, but a presence, or a residue, like something cold and flatly disturbing had trailed slimy fingers across the whole world. It seemed like that was probably the thing scaring Ezra. 

Luke turned his attention back to the connections between the Lothal Kids. He found the bond between Ezra and Jai again, and he latched onto it. It couldn't give him a direction, and he couldn't break into it, but he could feel, now, the fear coming down it. It was a cold trickle of apprehension, a consistent certainty of this-is-wrong. He really wanted to try harder, to fix it. But some things were beyond him.

He stood up. “Let's go tell my dad and the Jedi,” Luke said. 

+-+

Sidious's “lesson” was brief and terrifying. He'd taken Ezra to another underground chamber, this one with a big mural on the wall, a painting of a man, a woman, and an old man. There had been a staircase nearby, with outside-scented air leaking out of it, but Sidious's droid blocked the way. Sidious had thrown lightning from his hands at the mural, tried to throw the Force at it in forms ranging from subtle nudges to lightning roaring out of his fingertips, and had tried to use Ezra to manipulate it, but it had remained just a mural. Finally, Sidious had slapped Ezra across the face, growled “worthless child,” and dragged him to a different cell down a different passage. 

So now Ezra was alone. This cell was bigger, at least, three meters wide and three meters deep, with a little bed and something more than just a smelly hole to potty in (though a freestanding toilet was barely a step up). Ezra sat on the bed with his knees tucked up under his chin and he stared at the far wall until a Voice called his name. 

“Ezra?”

He looked up. He couldn't see anything, but that didn't have to mean there was nothing there.

“Yeah?” he tried.

“Ezra, Sidious is holding you right now, right?” the Voice sounded old, but strong, like a wizened great-grandfather.

Ezra nodded, and then reminded himself that if he couldn't see the person talking, they might not be able to see him, either. “Yes. I mean, he's not here with me, but he's got me, like, as a prisoner.”

The Voice let out a little hmming sound. “You're going to be rescued soon, but you have to listen to me. You have a Force bond with Jai Kell. You have a bond with all of the Lothal Kids, but especially Jai Kell. He can feel your emotions right now. If you focus, you'll be able to feel his worry, too.”

Ezra focused, and he blinked. Jai _was_ worried, and a sort of fragile hope was fighting with the worry. Jai must have felt Ezra's focus, but a little spike of delight tapped him across the bond.

The Voice went on, “When Sidious comes back, I need you to focus like that on the mural the whole time he's with you. It's very important. Anytime Sidious is with you, focus on the mural. Don't give him what he wants, but focus.”

Ezra nodded. “Okay. What's your name?”

The Voice sighed. “I can't tell you that. It's not time for you to know. You'll find out in a few years, okay?”

“Okay,” Ezra said.

“Good.” The Voice was suddenly joined by a surging warmth, the comfort of the Light Side of the Force. Ezra basked in it for a minute or two, and then it was gone. The stone walls and the humming of the ray shield were all that was left.

+-+

“I've got a bad feeling about this,” Quinlan said while Obi-Wan set the ship down. Leia had to agree. She could feel her brother just outside of the ship, and she could see him, eagerly hopping from one leg to the other, Dad behind him looking concerned.

“Quin, you get concerned any time you see Anakin,” Obi-Wan said.

“Obi,” Quinlan said, making syrupy sweetness drip sarcastically off of the name, “so far your padawan has gotten me shocked, stabbed, shot, run over by speeders three different times, and dropped from orbit.”

“Yes, but that's also your idea of a fun weekend,” Obi-Wan said as he finished shutting down the ship's systems. 

Quinlan stood up and headed toward the boarding ramp. “I only jumped from orbit once, and it was just because I was curious,” he objected.

Obi-Wan followed, and Leia followed after him. Quinlan palmed the loading ramp controls, and Luke scrambled up into the ship and threw his arms around her. While the adults got together and talked, Luke dragged Leia off into the Jedi Conservatorium. “This planet feels weird,” Leia complained. 

“It's the connections,” Luke said. “Stuff here is all connected together. The Jedi teachers don't know why, but if you meditate like Master Yoda showed us, you can feel it way better.”

Leia frowned and let Luke lead her to a fountain. They sat together on the edge of the stone basin, and Leia stretched out with the Force. Luke was right. The whole planet was a web. There were strong links between Jedi, weaker ones between Jedi and non-Jedi, and between animals and plants and places and everything. That was true everywhere, of course, but it was the _intensity_ of it that really stood out. The bonds between sentients and the world around them were weak and constantly shifting, breaking and forming all the time, and nonsentients usually had no permanent bonds unless a sentient forged one with them. 

On Lothal, normal went out the airlock. Every Jedi was bonded to every other, and Leia could feel a great network of links, nearly every sentient to every other, in fine, strong bonds. It wasn't just the sentient life, of course. That whole layer of it was bound up in permanent ties to the animals and plants. It wasn't all equal. Lothcats, like the feral strays on Coruscant, flocked around settlements because there was a bond between them and the people that felt suspiciously like the bond between Leia and Luke. Much more distant, almost five thousand of _something_ was connected to all the sentients by a bond like a distant parent, and in turn to a single, central _something else_ by threads so powerful Leia could almost see them, distant strands of gossamer love. 

The something else at the center of it all glowed with the Light Side, but not in the gentle, sheltering way that the Temple of Coruscant shone. This was a hard actinic brilliance that seemed to sear Leia's senses, and at the center of it was yet another something. 

Something dark. It was obscured by the harshness of its surroundings, so that trying to sense it clearly was as hopeless as trying to see a grain of sand held up against the sun. “Is it always like this?” Leia asked.

Luke shook his head. “The bonds are always there, but usually it's hard to detect that Light Side thing. It got like that for about an hour yesterday, and it got like that again about twenty minutes ago. Dad and all the Jedi keep saying they can't figure out where it is because it's—“

“—blinding,” Leia filled in for him. She dipped back into the Force, and it was the right word for it. The rest of it, she could sort of point to: this specific lothcat was in that direction, and that person was about so far away. The bright thing just blazed like a floodlight. Nearby, though, Leia felt a whole group of kids coming, including...

“Galen!” Leia yelled. She opened her eyes and watched Galen leading a small swarm of young pre-Jedi closer to her and Luke.

Galen hugged her. “Leia! The fun one is back!” He squeezed her tightly, then turned and gestured to the mismatched bunch he'd led over. Most of them were Human, but there were two Ithorians, a Rodian, a Zeltron, and a Vindar. Leia waved at the group while Galen rattled off names, finishing off by pointing to a distraught-looking Human and saying “and that's Jai. He's worried because he's totally in love with one of the missing kids.”

“I am not in love with him,” Jai objected. “I am seven. I'm not in love with anyone.”

“Are too,” Galen shot back intelligently. 

“Am not!” Jai said.

Before the conversation could turn truly inane, the Light stopped flaring. They all felt it. Suddenly the summer heat was less scorching, the sunlight reflecting off the water in the fountain was softer, the wind whispering over the grasses made a gentler sound, and even the few clouds in the sky seemed to slow down. Leia gasped. “We should go inside and try to meditate together. All three of us.” 

“Oh come on, Leia,” Galen complained, “we're not gonna figure out more than the grown-ups have.”

+-+

Jai Kell was _not_ in love with Ezra Bridger. Galen Marek was a crass, uncouth, feral child, and he obviously didn't know how being friends with people worked. Jai considered, quietly, that he never should have told Marek about how much he missed hugging his friend. 

Besides, Jai was worried about all of the missing kids, not just Ezra. He just happened to have a stronger bond with Ezra than with anyone else. And he was, he had to admit, _more_ worried about Ezra than about anyone else. Ezra was his closest friend, and it was only natural to be worried about him.

If Galen was going to make fun of somebody, it should really be Ezra's Kanan, anyway. The knight was freaking _all the way_ out, and had been for days. Somehow, the powerful surges of the Light Side were making him even more nervous. It didn't make any sense to Jai: The Light Side was good, and it should protect Ezra, not endanger him. But it seemed to really bother all the older Jedi.

“It's just so different from the Temple on Coruscant,” Mister Obi-Wan said the fifth time they talked about it.

“Feels like a test, it does,” Master Yoda, a little green Jedi who had arrived earlier that day, said. “Many such places, there are. A temple, we seek.”

Kanan twitched a little. “How could we miss a whole temple?”

“The Living Force,” Mister Obi-Wan said. 

Mister Quinlan, who was leaning on Mister Obi-Wan's legs while sitting on the floor, continued seamlessly on from the thought. “The Force reveals things like this to whoever needs them, but sometimes the big important things like this will hide for generations.”

Mister Skywalker took a deep breath. “So how do we find it?”

“Flare again soon, it will. Follow the light, we must.” Yoda looked around the room. “Difficult it will be, but find it together we will.” His huge eyes landed directly on Jai. “Find it together, all of us will. Here, bring the other children.”

Jai nodded and scurried off to find the rest of the kids.

+-+

Attempt number thirty one was just as exhausting as all the others. While Sidious fumed and fought the searing Light-Side energy pouring through the temple, Ezra focused on the mural. The only reason Sidious hadn't figured out it was him causing the Light, Ezra was sure, was that the power the mural put off was flooding out his senses.

“Yield your secrets!” Sidious shouted at the mural. He approached it, waving his hands and growling what sounded like incantations at it. Finally, he turned to Ezra. “Come here, boy,” he ground out.

Ezra stepped reluctantly up to the man, trying to ignore his unsettling stench. He kept focusing on the mural. 

“Touch the painting,” Sidious growled. Ezra reached out. The painted woman in the mural vaguely reminded Ezra of his mother, and he ran his fingers along the stone over her dress. The painting seemed to shimmer at his touch. 

“Good,” Sidious said. Ezra was abruptly pulled away from the mural by the Force, sent back to his cell. He stopped focusing on the mural, and the flood of Light faded away.

Sidious paced in front of the mural, then turned to Ezra. The thick ozone smell of the ray shield was comforting under the force of that glare.

“It's you,” Sidious said. “You're doing it. I don't know how a weakling like you is doing it, but—“

Behind Sidious there was a grating noise. He whirled in time to see the painting rearrange itself. The old man's mouth opened, and the Voice that had spoken to Ezra before spoke up again. “Sidious, you're playing with fire.”

Sidious twitched. “No. No. No no no no no. You will not interfere with—“

“I am already on my way, Sidious. You didn't survive Mace Windu while you were at your peak. Do you really think you can survive Yoda, Obi-Wan, Quinlan Vos, and me in the state you're in now? How many times can you die before there's no more coming back?”

Sidious looked around the room, frantically. Another Voice joined the first one, this one a woman's voice, young and strong, speaking through the woman in the painting. “You'll have your day of glory, Sidious. But this isn't it.”

A third Voice, this one dark and heavily filtered by a vocoder, spoke out of the last image in the mural. “I would suggest that you run. Don't try to destroy the temple on your way out. You've lost this round. Trying to take a parting shot will ruin everything.”

Sidious snarled, but he turned and fled. The mural returned to normal, and about half an hour later, Kanan rushed into the mural chamber. He hurried to the side of Ezra's cell while a whole collection of other people rushed by behind him. Ezra rushed into Kanan's arms the instant the ray shield was down. He felt the tears leaking from his eyes while Kanan stroked his hair. 

“It's over now,” Kanan said. “It's over, you're safe. We're not going to let anything happen to you.”

+-+

Mom hugged Dad fiercely and started talking in hushed tones with him the instant he came back with the other adults. There was Caleb, who all the kids called Kanan, and Depa Billaba, and Yoda, and Obi-Wan and Quinlan, and a couple of other Jedi Leia didn't know, but only Caleb-Kanan came over to the kids. He had the four missing Lothal Kids in tow, and as they approached, Jai ran across the room to hug one of them. All four got buried under hugs after that while Leia stood back with Luke and Galen.

“I'm pretty sure Galen is right,” Luke said. “Did you see that? I mean, obviously Jai has a crush.”

“A crush, sure,” Leia said, “But he's not in love.” 

The little crowd parted long enough for them to work their way into it, so they did. As they got closer Leia could just hear the boy Jai had hugged saying “was really scary, Jai. I thought he was gonna hurt me, but he just kept making me try to move that stupid painting. Every time he did, though, I did what the Force people told me, and it made the whole place do that Light-Side thing.”

Jai's wide eyes made him look a little comical. He was staring right at the boy who could only be Ezra. Leia had to admit that Ezra was good-looking. He had shaggy black hair and sharp features, with a slightly downturned nose that probably would have looked sharp or severe on a face less built for smiling. He'd probably turn all sorts of heads when he grew up. As Leia concluded that she couldn't really blame Jai for his crush, Galen elbowed Jai in the ribs. Jai turned, looked at Galen's kilometer-wide gash of a grin, and turned bright red.

“You guys really all worked together to find us?” Ezra asked.

Leia nodded. Luke stepped around her to get a better look. Ezra's eyes tracked him for a long moment. “Yeah, we all worked together to find you,” Leia said, “but it was mostly the Lothal Kids. You all have a really cool Force connection.” She tapped herself on the chest. “I'm Leia Amidala-Skywalker. The blond weirdo with the big eyes is my brother Luke, and the rude one is our friend Galen Marek.” Leia shook Ezra's hand when it was offered, and Galen pumped it up and down way too vigorously, but when Ezra and Luke shook, Leia could feel a tiny brush of the Force against her mind. 

“You're going to be a Jedi,” Leia said, and like sometimes happened, it wasn't entirely voluntary. The certainty bubbled up into her through the Force, and the words had to either come out of Luke or come out her her.

Ezra blinked. “I mean, yeah. Kanan's gonna train me.”

“You need to come to Coruscant soon,” Leia added, wondering where this was all going. “You should ask Kanan to take you, but you need to wait until he can ride a ghost there with you.”

“Um,” Ezra said.

Leia watched Luke squeeze Ezra's hand. “I'll meet you there when you go. Don't let Kanan ride the Ghost to Coruscant without you.” Luke grimaced at his own words. He took a deep breath and slowly let go of Ezra's hand. “Um. Sorry. Sometimes the Force kinda... you're supposed to follow the advice when that happens, but we don't know what it means. I guess exciting stuff is gonna happen.”

“Exciting?” Ezra said. He shook his head. “I've got a bad feeling about this.”

+-+

_FORTY SEVEN YEARS LATER_

Anakin glared at his grandson. “That was mean,” he said.

Ben pulled off his mask and smirked unrepentantly at him. “I'm sorry, was I supposed to be nice to the Dark Lord of the Sith?”

“That was almost cute,” Rey quipped. “He seemed like a confused old man.”

“He was only seventy two,” Anakin objected.

“Are you denying your advanced state of decrepitude?” Ben asked, standing up and resting a hand against the Son's hand on the mural. Rey went to the Daughter and mirrored Ben's actions. Anakin rested his own hand against the Father's.

“I am not decrepit,” Anakin said.

“You kind of are,” an unwelcome voice said from the door. 

Anakin turned to glare at his son-in-law. “Your input is not called for, Solo.” 

“No, Dad, keep going,” Ben said. “Tell him his hair is bad.”

“No, I'm not digging that grave,” Solo said. “Actually, I'm just here to let you know Ezra and Luke are back with Finn. He didn't get an exact location, but he says it's narrowed down a lot.”

Anakin's shoulders relaxed about a million notches. “Ben, go get your edgy teenage rebellion friends. If Finn has it down to a sector or two, it's time for aggressive negotiations.”

“Ben, what's 'aggressive negotiations?'” Rey asked.

Ben smiled, tucking his helmet under his arm. “The only negotiations the Knights of Ren are good for. Negotiations with a lightsaber.”

“Why can't you be a normal Jedi?” Rey complained.

“That's easy,” Ben said. “My grandpa is this lunatic,” he pointed to Anakin, “and my dad taught me how to fight dirty instead of telling me bedtime stories.” He left, and Anakin let himself slump a little. 

“That was exhausting,” he said.

“I told you it was a young man's game,” Luke said, coming down the stairs Ben had just gone up. “I could have done it.”

“And leave your poor husband terrified?” Anakin shook his head. “No. Your mother isn't around to yell at me for taking stupid risks anymore, so I'm going to take stupid risks. Now help me up those stairs. I could aggressively negotiate with an entire buffet right now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Anakin is 76 in that last bit. I thought for sure he would be well into his eighties by that point, but apparently not.
> 
> Also: Zez's name is absolutely a reference to the best of the Jedi masters from KOTOR2.


End file.
